The Spanish Duke's Virgin Bride

Original Creator: Chantelle Shaw

Artist: Keiko Kishimoto

Publisher: Harlequin K.K./SOFTBANK Creative Corp.

Rating: Young Adults 16+

Release Date: March 2011

The premise of this title is so ridiculous, I don’t even know how to begin… ah well, here we go.

Agnus Beresford, a bank manager, gets hooked on online gambling and embezzles money from his branch of a bank to pay for his wife’s medical treatment. The wife dies anyway and he’s left in crippling debt, disgrace, and depression. The heroine, his daughter Grace Beresford, decides to try to settle the case outside of court by going straight to his boss, Duke Herrera. Conveniently, this “hero” needs to marry someone fast in order to keep his hold on his grandfather’s estate. Three guesses as to what happens. 

What I don’t understand is why Duke Herrera thinks it’s a good move to marry the daughter of the man who embezzled you out of £3 million. Or why he decides to fake a lovey-dovey marriage at all--- his grandfather’s will doesn’t say he needs to be happily married, just married. And it only has to last a year… why not just marry his secretary and give her a bonus at the end of it?

To make matters worse, their “romance” is downright creepy. He’s literally controlling her every move, and making moves on her while she’s clearly shying away. And I don’t want to outright call it Stockholm Syndrome, but when he allows her to visit her father for a day (her mentally unstable father that she was worried would commit suicide a few pages earlier…) her response is “How can I thank you…” with tears in her eyes. Just, no.

Flash forward to the day of the wedding. We are informed that, while we weren’t looking, Grace’s smile has “bloomed like a rose inside this fort, brightening everything around her.” Their relationship is slightly less creepy… he doesn’t sexually assault her anymore, at least. Not after their wedding night, which has the funniest lines in the book,

“Why are you acting like a scared virgin?!”
“Because I am a scared virgin!”
“Impossible!”

That does much to lighten the mood, until the next page where he orders her to go to sleep or he’ll rape her. But hey, it only takes his pet Doberman getting run over to convince Grace that Duke Herrera does too have a heart! So our two leads finally get in bed with each other, on page 93.

What the heck is this, I don’t even.

So, yeah. I don’t recommend this title, unless you want something completely ridiculous to snark at. That’s actually not a bad idea, from my experience. Get a friend in on it and take turns reading the character’s lines out loud in whatever fanciful accent you can dream up. Just don’t go into this story expecting something honestly good, and you’ll be fine.